When Canadian developer Peter Todd found out that a new HBO documentary, Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, was set to identify him as Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, he was mostly just pissed.
Canadian developer Peter Todd was surprised to learn that a new HBO documentary, Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, would identify him as Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin.
“This was clearly going to be a circus,” Todd told WIRED in an email.
The identity of the person—or people—who created Bitcoin has been speculated on since December 2010, when they disappeared from public view. The mystery is especially intriguing because of the trove of bitcoin that Satoshi is widely believed to have controlled, suspected to be worth many billions of dollars today. When the documentary was released on October 8, Todd joined a long line of alleged Satoshis.
Documentary maker Cullen Hoback, who in a previous film claimed to have identified the individual behind QAnon, laid out his theory to Todd on camera. The confrontation would become the climactic scene of the documentary. But Todd nonetheless claims that he didn't see it coming; he alleges he was left with the impression the film was about the history of Bitcoin, not the identity of its creator.
Since the documentary aired, Todd has repeatedly and categorically denied that he created Bitcoin: “For the record, I am not Satoshi,” he alleges. “I think Cullen made the Satoshi accusation for marketing. He needed a way to get attention for his film.”
For his part, Hoback remains confident in his conclusions. The various denials and deflections from Todd, he claims, are part of a grand and layered misdirection. “While of course we can’t outright say he is Satoshi, I think that we make a very strong case,” says Hoback.
Whatever the truth, Todd will now bear the burden of having been unmasked as Satoshi. He has gone into hiding.
The search for the creator of Bitcoin has dragged into its orbit a colorful cast of characters, among them Hal Finney, recipient of the first ever bitcoin transaction; Adam Back, designer of a precursor technology cited in the Bitcoin white paper; and cryptographer Nick Szabo, to name just a few. Journalists at Newsweek, the New York Times and WIRED, among others, have all taken stabs at solving the Satoshi riddle. But irrefutable proof has never been unearthed.
